Back in September, the collective mind of Film Twitter was blown when it was reported that Barry Jenkins was going to direct a ‘Lion King’ film for Disney. The director of “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” is jumping onto the Disney bandwagon to make a billion-dollar blockbuster? What?! Well, according to a new interview with Jenkins at Variety, he explained that he had the same hesitancy, but he ultimately changed his mind.
READ MORE: Barry Jenkins To Direct ‘Lion King’ Sequel For Disney
Jenkins was speaking to fellow filmmaker Chloe Zhao when the topic of “The Lion King” was brought up. And the way he explained the process, it really does sound like this isn’t a Disney cash grab and there might be something special here.
“My agents send me a lot of scripts. When this one came, super top secret, I was very skeptical,” said Jenkins. “Like you, I remember when ‘The Lion King’ came out. I had two nephews, and so I used to watch it with them. ‘Lion King’ was the ‘Baby Shark’ of my time. I’d seen it literally hundreds of times and I had this connection to it, and yet I was skeptical because, who am I to make a ‘Lion King’ movie? Not a ‘Lion King’ sequel! A ‘Lion King’ movie.”
He added, “I read the script and about 40 pages in, I turned to Lulu [Wang] and I said, ‘Holy shit, this is good.’ And as I kept reading, I got further away from the side of my brain that said, ‘Oh, a filmmaker like you doesn’t make a film like this,’ and allowed myself to get to the place where these characters, this story, is amazing. What really pushed me across the line was James [Laxton], my DP, said, ‘You know what? There’s something really interesting in this mode of filmmaking that we haven’t done and that not many people have done.’ That was when I went back to the powers that be and said, ‘I would love to do this, but I’ve got to be able to do what I do.’ And they said yes!…And knowing that Chloe Zhao had gone from one of the most beautiful films of the century with ‘The Rider’ to making a Marvel movie, I was like, ‘Oh, shit. If she can do it, I can do it.’”
Look, we’re just as shocked as everyone else that Jenkins is taking such a sharp turn in his career to go from mid-budget, auteur dramas to a CGI-fest like “The Lion King,” but after reading his explanation, you have to admit there’s a tinge of excitement, right? And if this is enough to get Barry Jenkins and Lulu Wang excited, doesn’t it deserve the benefit of the doubt? Regardless, Jenkins’ ‘Lion King’ is coming. And he has yet to steer us wrong.
